I Was 53 When I Learned I Had Been Adopted

SATURDAY SPECIAL - Adoption: Stories of love

August 28, 1999|By William C. Hall, Special to The Sentinel

It was mother's 81st birthday, her third in a nursing home. It was also my last day of filial innocence. Nursing-home social workers and chaplains often counsel patients to unburden themselves of painful secrets while they may. I learned that I had been adopted 53 years earlier.

For me, it was a very strange epiphany.

Later that day, I spoke with a cousin, who told me that I was adopted from an agency in Evanston, Ill. My cousin and others had been sworn to secrecy years earlier by my mother. After some weeks of emotional anguish, I began to consider the possibilities of searching for my biological family.

Inquiries were made of the adoption agency, which readily acknowledged my unwanted pedigree, but, as required by statute, would provide only ``non-identifying'' information about my ``birth parents'' and siblings.

My biological mother - a coldly clinical term - was 30 when I was born, and my father - identified as her husband - was 36. The agency matron with whom I spoke advised that mothers sometimes falsified information for ``very personal'' reasons.

I replied, ``You mean that I'm probably a bastard.''

A cheerless place, that agency. It was in an ivy-covered, Gothic building just off the Northwestern University campus, where blue-haired ladies spoke in whispers, and the interior walls were covered with the forlorn photos of thousands of babies. It was rather like something out of Dickens.

Through a lawyer friend in Chicago, I learned of a woman who was highly regarded for her work in helping adoptees to find their biological families. I contacted her at her home in California and learned that she also had searched for and found her birth mother. It was an unhappy reunion. They often are, she advised.

In the weeks that followed, letters and documents arrived in the mail as my sleuth began the arcane task of finding people who probably didn't want to be found - even a half-century after an unwanted pregnancy.

In due course, I was reunited with a half-brother and obtained pictures of my mother (the resemblance is uncanny). I also saw pictures of my sister. In addition, I have visited with several surviving aunts and learned of the debilitating mental illness that afflicted my birth mother for most of her adult life - bipolar disorder, most likely. My half-brother has since died of complications from alcoholism, which has also afflicted his children. My half-sister - when last seen - was a hopeless alcoholic. No one knew what became of my birth mother; the family last heard from her more than 25 years ago.

Subsequently, two of my children have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I only wish I had been allowed to learn more about my adoption sooner.